As some may remember (fondly, of course), for most of TBC, I had provided an updated FAQ detailing most of the data that rogues would need to get into PvE and know their class. As a lot has changed since then, I'm once again updating my Compendium for the rogue population.

Credit once again has to be given to Nooblestick, the original father of the Rogue FAQ. Even though I've taken his data and essentially changed it until it's no longer recognizable from his original thread, I had to get the original information from somewhere, and he's responsible for that info. Also, most information I've learned about rogue mechanics comes from EJ. Credit goes to the rogues over there for being bigger math nerds than I am.

So if some of this stuff seems eerily familiar, don't fret; you've seen it before and I'm not claiming ownership of said info.

The actual stats on each race don't really matter. At 60, the difference in stats will be negligible compared to the gear you're wearing, and even more so at 70, and even more at 80 and 85. We will instead be comparing racial abilities and traits.

Alliance

Night Elf

Elusiveness Passive; Increases your stealth by five points (this is equal to one extra level in stealth). Also increases speed while stealthed by 5%.

Nature Resistance Passive; Decreases the chance you will be hit by Nature spells by 2%.

Quickness Passive; Reduces the chance you will be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 2%. The non-magic version of the nature resist one. (Works as chance to miss instead of dodge now, so will not proc overpower on enemy warriors for example.) Double as effective as it used to be.

Shadowmeld Ability; a slightly less-powerful Vanish on a 2 min cooldown. You cannot move while Shadowmelded, but you can use openers. In PvE, threat is wiped while Shadowmelded, but restored on exit.

A decent race to pick for Rogue. Their racial ability can be very useful.[/li]

Human

Every Man for Himself Ability; functions like a PvP trinket, but also shares cooldown with the PvP trinkets. 3 min cooldown.

Another decent race to pick as a rogue (the best for PvE on Alliance). The increased weapon skill and diplomacy are nice for PvE. Every Man for Himself is worthless in PvP, as trinkets are on a 2 min cooldown.

Not the best race for a Rogue, but a good race in general. Escape Artist will save you in PvP more often than you think.

Dwarf

Stoneform Ability: 8 Second immunity to poisons, diseases and bleed effects, as well as 10% increased armor. 3 minute cooldown. Nice to use before a Vanish so you don't get knocked out instantly due to Warrior/Rogue DoTs.

Overall the best race for alliance rogues, probably the best for PvP on alliance.

Horde

Orc

Blood Fury Ability; increases Attack Power by 6 + (your_level -1) * 4 for 15 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. That's 242 Attack Power at level 60, 282 at 70, 322 at 80, and 342 at 85. Decreases all healing effects by 50% for 15 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. This adds a very large amount of damage while it's active, and is a very powerful ability in PvE. Also useful in PvP, but to a lesser extent.

A good choice for a Rogue. Blood Fury makes you a PvE powerhouse. The best PvE choice for a Rogue (tied with Goblins).

Undead

Will of the Forsaken Ability; removes all Fear, Sleep, and Charm effects. 2 minute cooldown, shared 30 second cooldown with PvP trinkets. An extremely useful PvP ability. If PvP is your primary focus, this alone should be enough to make up your mind, as classes that can Fear repeatedly often give Rogues the most trouble.

Tied for the best PvP choice for a Rogue, out of every race (tied with Goblins, in my opinion). WotF is slightly less powerful now that it shares a 30 second cooldown with PvP trinkets, but still insanely helpful in PvP.

Troll

Berserking Ability; increases attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds. 3 minute cooldown. Not a bad ability, but if you're just looking for a damage increase ability, Orcs are better.

With the nerf to WotF, Blood Elves are tied with Undead (and Goblins) in terms of PvP value.

Goblin

Rocket Jump(Barrage) Abilities; tied to the same 2 min cooldown, you can either choose to fire rockets at your enemy (similar to the rocket gloves Engineering enchantment), or to use Rocket Jump and launch yourself forward. Very useful racials for PvP, decent for PvE.

Traits: Time is Money (1% haste, unsure if this will also effect energy regeneration), Best Deals Anywhere (always get a 20% discount at vendors as if you were exalted), Pack Hobgoblin (call your Hobgoblin servant, allowing you to access your bank every 30 mins), Better Living Through Chemistry (+15 Alchemy skill).

Tied for the best race for rogues in PvP, tied for the best in PvE; you also get the bonus of being the coolest race in WoW.

Weapons

Pretty simple on what to do with weapons. For Assassination and Sub, use daggers. For combat, use whatever you want, as long as you're not using a dagger main hand.

For all specs, use a slow MH (1.8+ for daggers, 2.4+ for everything else) and fast (sub-1.5) OH, and use Instant MH, Deadly OH.

Rogues, perhaps more than any other class, rely on their specs to define their game play.

To that end, changing even one point in a build can have dramatic changes in a build. In this FAQ, I'll cover some of the main builds for PvE. But first, let me answer a few questions.

Are these all of the good builds?

No. These are the "cookie cutter" builds of the rogue class. That's not to say that there aren't other builds that work, but these work the best.

Why isn't (random build) here?

Because it's not a cookie cutter build. It may do well for you, but it's not a common build, and you'd probably do at least as well as you currently do with a bit of practice with one of the builds in this thread.

Why are these builds the best?

Many rogues (including myself) have spent countless thousands of gold in respecs to move even one point in these builds. We've determined the best talent specs, point-for-point, for each kind of build for a rogue.

What's the best leveling spec?

It's arguable, but IMO it's one of these: Mutilate, Sub, or Combat. That said, almost any build can be used to level. I prefer to always have Nightstalker, as moving faster in stealth is incredibly useful when questing.

Now, on to the PvE specs.

Keep in mind that specs are still new, ergo we don't have a 100% grasp on what talents are the best.

Rotations are pretty easy; keep Rupture up and Envenom as needed to keep up your SnD. Once you're under 35% boss HP, start using BS for massive damage. Make sure you're using 4-5 combo point finishers; DO NOT max your combo points for every finisher, as this will reduce your DPS. If you don't get a crit on your Mutilates and are sitting at 4 combo points, DO NOT mutilate again; use Envenom or Rupture.

Combat. The old stand-by of rogue PvE; fortunately for all of us, it no longer requires specific weapons, as long as you have slow/fast and don't use a dagger MH. For your rotation, essentially keep up SnD full-time and use Rupture and Evis for every other finisher. Dropping Rupture seems to be a ~1% DPS drop, so it's not a big deal if Rupture drops off for a second or two.

RvS (Revealing Strike); is it any good? Sources say that it's about a 100 DPS drop when you drop it from the rotation. Use it at 4 CPs in easy fights, but I'd drop it completely in complicated ones.

New is that Sub is actually a viable build (at this point) in PvE. Essentially you're going to be keeping SnD and Recuperate up, and then using Evis to roll your Rupture. BS is your main combo point generator, and at this point it seems that Hemo is not viable at all, unless you lack the 30% bleed buff (very hard, as warriors and ferals both have it).

Sub lags behind Assassination and Combat by a good 5-10% DPS, at this point in testing.

These are of course not all of the builds rogues will ever use. I will keep this updated, and of course when the level cap is raised to 85, I will replace these builds with their 85 equivalents.

PvP builds will be discussed either at a later date, or in the PvP forum.

Mechanics(Otherwise titled "Hit Capping, Expertise, and you." Written by myself.)

WotLK/Cata preface: when I refer to "hit cap" now, I refer to the poison hit cap. Since poisons are considered spells, they use the spell hit cap. Our special cap is far below poisons, and you should cap for poisons, ergo you will always meet the special hit cap.

Since there are so many questions about hit rating, expertise, glancing blows, etc on the forums, I figure I'll write a little article about them to broaden our understanding of how these mechanics work. (Keep in mind this is for level cap only.)

So, on a mob, there are 5 outcomes of WoW's "one-roll" system:

Crit

White hit

Glancing Blow (25%)

Miss (28%)

Dodge (6.5%)

Parry (6.5%)

Block (5%)

Now, here's where we need to break up the mechanics very simply.

Let's assume you're a rogue in my raid. You meet the hit cap, therefore you cannot miss. You've pushed the miss chance off the table.

So the table now looks like the following:

25% Glancing

17% White hit

40% crit

6.5% Dodge

6.5% Parry

5% Block

Now, let me explain glancing blows. Glancing blows are there, always. There's no way to remove them, there's no way to decrease the chance they happen, they're just there. Always 25% on a raid boss (level 83). This brings in the term "crit cap". Crit cap basically means how much crit you can get before it's worthless and crit strikes start being pushed off the table. What I mean by that is that using our table up there, you've still got 17% of your hits that will be normal white hits. If you get to 57% crit, you're at crit cap. If you get to 58%, you're past crit cap, and now you've got 1% crit falling off the hit table, which is wasted itemization.

You really should never have to worry about the crit cap because of something that we also have to take into account: ROGUES ALWAYS ATTACK FROM BEHIND. I don't give two sh*ts about what the encounter is, but if you're on a boss, you're attacking from behind. There are a few exceptions, but your raid should know it's your first time on a boss and let you know NOT to attack from behind say on Onyxia.

Here's why. This is what our attack table looks like attacking from behind. Same boss, same mechanics, nothing has changed; we JUST MOVED BEHIND.

25% Glancing

28.5% White hit

40% crit

6.5% Dodge

Know what the difference is? Instead of that 11.5% parry/block chance, you've now got 11.5% more white hits that 1) aren't glancing, and 2) are doing damage to the mob. Do you see now why rogues always attack from behind?

Now, some more knowledgeable posters may be screaming, "WHAT ABOUT EXPERTISE?!" Yeah, I'm getting to that.

As far as Expertise goes, Expertise rating transfers to Expertise at 7.688690185546875 rating per point. 26 expertise will give you 6.5% negated dodge, giving you an attack table that looks like this:

25% Glancing

35% White hit

40% crit

That's now 35% pure white hits. You can see why this is advantageous.

So, there's the end of this little tutorial. Let me sum up by giving you the "front" and "behind" attack tables, along with relevant hit caps.

From the front:

25% Glancing

48.5% crit/white hit

6.5% Dodge

15% Parry

5% Block (on mobs that can)

From the rear:

25% Glancing

68.5% crit/white hit

6.5% Dodge

0% Parry

0% Block

For these values, the first is the spell hit cap, the second is the white hit cap (that you will never hit).

Engineers: due to changes in 4.0.1, we can apply tinkers in addition to our normal enchants, so reasonably you should have Flexweave Underlay (cloak), Hyperspeed Accelerators, and Nitro Boosts on your gear. All will be situationally useful, and there's no reason not to have them.

Zam PvP forumThe PvP forum is where most of the PvPers on this site hang out, so come over and check it out. Post if you have questions.

Arena Junkies - RogueA PvP resource, though a distasteful one. Most of the posters there treat it's as if it's a WoW and 4chan hybrid. It's irritating, but they have quite a few knowledgeable posters, so it's a resource.

PvE:

Elitist JerksEverything you need to know about Rogue PvE can be found here. No other links needed.

New links that you would like added can be PM'd to me.

Rogue Macros: (Written by myself.)

Rogues don't use many macros, but the few macros we do use can make our lives a whole heck of a lot easier.

Here are some macros that I use (mainly in a PvP environment) that make my life easier:

Make sure to turn auto looting on in the interface menu when using this macro.

The Throwing/Shoot Macro:

This macro, simply put, will throw when you've got a throwing weapon equipped, and will use shoot when you've got a bow/gun/xbow equipped.

/cast [noequipped:Thrown] Shoot; /cast [equipped:Thrown] Throw

That's it. This macro will also work for priests etc with wands, as they can't really equip throwing weapons.

The Spam-Sap Macro:

This is a macro you can spam and it will continually try to target a target within sapping distance, and then sap that target. This will only work on players. I may change it in WotLK when we can sap anything, but I seriously doubt it. I still keep my normal Sap bound, but it's like the + key on my num pad.

#showtooltip Sap /cleartarget /targetenemyplayer /cast Sap

The /targetenemyplayer line specifically targets only enemy players, not NPCs. It will never target anything that is not player-controlled, i.e. pets.

The Blind Macro:

This macro is one of the more useful macros, but you need to use your brain to use it. What this macro does is uses Blind; it first checks to see if you have a focus target (use /focus or bind a key through the Key Bindings interface, or use Gladius to set it), and if you have a focus target, it will use Blind on that target. If you don't have a focus target, it will Blind your current target.

This will rotate through those offhand weapons in that order. This becomes a very useful macro in arena, when you need to equip a seperate offhand with Mind Numbing or an extra offhand with Wound Poison.

For equipping pieces of gear, you can usually just use "/equip".

That's all for now, let me know if there are other macros you'd like to see added.

Edit: Also it should be noted that the 3% crit meta is broken unless you're using a lot of hit gems. I've personally switched to crit/run speed and switched my boot enchant to Assault (32 AP or whatever) until they fix it.

Race/Weapon post updated with further information about race choices (i.e. Goblins have finally been tested and parse about on-par with Orcs as the best PvE choice for Horde, and Worgen are parsing as the best race choice for Alliance PvE) and weapon/poison choices.

The talent post has also been updated with a combat leveling build, and each of the raiding specs has been updated with more info.

Yeah, I tried it once for PVE while in dungeons. I just couldn't get it. Gave up after that. I probably need to tweak my mut spec though now that I'm dual specced... I just don't know how to play her that way... and I don't have daggers lol